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"Sketching is one of my passions. I don't feel comfortable when I leave home without a sketchbook and some pens in my bag. I think that my way to put things in my memory is to draw them. And taking pictures isn't the same thing.

I live in a very dynamic surrounding — Israel is a warm country with warm weather and warm people. Of course, we have seashores, which calm us a little bit. I love to sit in a corner of some Tel-Aviv coffee shop and explore relationships: between people, their environment, between myself. All this unique local mix of cultures, languages and styles is always a great source for inspiration. You need to be fast, because, as I said, everything is very dynamic. But that's why I love it so much.

Sometimes, I look around, and I find some usual items like sugar bags or napkins. I use them in my drawings to show the atmosphere. Sometimes I draw directly on placemats."

"The dictionary says that a hobby is “an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation.” Although urban sketching certainly provides both pleasure and relaxation, I don’t think of it as my hobby. I think of it more as a way of life – something that has become such a normal part of my everydayness that it shapes how I view the world.

For most of my life I had both the fear of drawing as well as the desire to draw. In 2011, inspired by Gabi Campanario’s Seattle Sketcher column, I finally decided to overcome the fear. His drawings of Seattle – my birthplace and lifelong home – were of sights that I had seen many times, yet had never truly seen. I wanted to learn to see, and therefore experience, those locations (and any new ones that I travel to) more completely. Part 8 of the Urban Sketchers Manifesto, to “show the world, one drawing at a time,” has a flip side: Sketching enables me to see my own world, one drawing at a time.

In the last four years, it is not an exaggeration to say that Urban Sketchers has changed my life. I have met and sketched with many wonderful people around the globe, either at symposiums or during other travel, because the USk network brought us together. I sketch almost weekly with my local group, sharing sketches, art supplies and friendship. Even when I stay home and enjoy sketches online, I am still a part of that rich network, learning with every sketch about other people’s lives.

In May, my husband Greg and I went to France for the first time, and I sketched the Eiffel Tower. Sketching one of the world’s most famous icons felt like a dream come true – the ultimate in urban sketching. But although I can’t resist sketching world-famous icons whenever I’m fortunate enough to see them, for me, urban sketching is much more than that.

Urban sketching is a tree with its middle chopped away to accommodate Seattle’s ubiquitous power lines. It’s about a couple of women chatting over coffee, or about workers roofing the house next door. It’s about an excavator filling a hole where a cherry tree once stood. Or the Tibetan monastery I drive by frequently that I couldn’t resist because it’s bright orange. Urban sketching is a string band performing at a local farmers’ market – or perhaps in Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Celebrating the mundane as well as the famous is what urban sketching is all about. My sketches are not necessarily about “special” moments; they are moments made special because I sketched them."

Tina has been editor of Drawing Attention since 2013 and now serves on the Urban Sketchers editorial board. See more of her sketches on her blog, on Flickr and on Instagram.

"I was born in Mumbai (Bombay) and lived in different parts of India until I moved to San Jose, California, where I now live.

Travel inspires my art, but, traveling or not, I try to view the world around me as a traveller would; so whether I’m capturing a moment of calm on the banks of the Ganges in India, or sketching over coffee at my local coffee shop, I aim to look deeply, and with wonder, at both the everyday and the exotic, the old and the new.

I love color. My sketch kit consists of Extra Fine Sharpies (the fact that they bleed into the paper as soon as they touch it works really well for me—it forces me to work super-quick), a small set of Prismacolor pencils and a little watercolor travel set".• Blog• Flickr

"I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where I studied architecture. I moved to Kassel (Germany) in 1999 to accomplish a master degree.
Although I have always drawn and paint, it was not until I started studying in the Uni-Kassel, that I started keeping a travel sketchbook. I had a teacher there who used to do a lot of sketches when he travelled on university excursions. When he retired, I helped to organize an exhibition of his sketches. He brought a huge box full of sketchbooks he had filled since he was an architecture student. I spent a whole day selecting the most interesting drawings. It was a wonderful experience that opened my eyes to a new world.
In the last 10 years I have the feeling of being in a long journey. I like to discover the cities where I live, to understand why a place is the way it is and what makes it different and unique from others. Drawing is for me a way to learn to love a place, to become part of it.
I like to draw architecture but I am more attracted to urban scenery, portraying how people live in the city. Since I’m a foreigner, everything that locals find normal and taken-for-granted, for me is exotic. I always carry a small watercolor travel set from Windsor and Newton and my sketchbook in my bag.
I always thought that drawing was a solitary experience until I found Urban Sketchers. It was amazing to find so many people doing the same thing. It is a great place to share!"
• Omar's blog.
• Omar's art on flickr.
• Omar's website.

Freedom Revolution Workshop! Capture the city through its “heroes”

Overcome the fear of sketching people, and discover fun and expressive ways of capturing the city's inhabitants in action!

The workshop will take place on April 25th, a very special date for the Portuguese people - the 41st Anniversary of Portugal's Carnation Revolution.

Special dates and celebrations are wonderful opportunities for a sketcher to capture the essence of a city. All the streets will be decorated in special ways, but the thing that best characterizes the event, and tells the most interesting stories, will be of course the people - marching, singing, laughing, shouting, eating, drinking - celebrating their freedom!

Drawing people has always interested artists the most and been considered to be the hardest to do. Drawing people in their natural surroundings, moving, interacting, is even more challenging. People change their postures all the time, often leaving in the middle of a sketch.So, how do we go about it?The workshop will help the participants to overcome the fear of sketching people, and to discover fun and expressive ways of capturing the city's inhabitants in action, caught up in their daily routines. We will try to show in our sketches the city through its main heroes – people!

In two sessions through the all day (6 hours) workshop we will try to give participants the skills to approach people-sketching and urban storytelling with confidence.

The workshop will take place at very busy and full of people places in Lisbon:

Morning session (10:30-13:30):Largo do Carmo

Afternoon session (15:00-18:00): Terreiro do Paço

The workshop will include three exercises, each of them will begin with a discussion and quick demonstration of possible approaches.

1. Capture emotionsA series of fast sketches studying people’s faces through their emotions.

2. Capture actionA series of fast sketches capturing the figure in action, the body language.

3. Put your "heroes" into the sceneLonger sketch of people in their surroundings.

Learning goals:

To overcome the fear of sketching people

To discover fun and expressive ways of capturing the city's inhabitants in action, busy with their daily routine

To improve their observation ability

To study people's faces through their emotions

To capture the action, the body language

To learn how to find stories in everyday situations

To demonstrate techniques and approaches to sketching people

To show how composition and use of the page’s space/spread helps us to tell our story

To enjoy an activity that gives us the possibility to experience urban life in a very deep and authentic way

Registration fee

Meet the instructor

Marina Grechanik was born in Belorussia and graduated from an art academy in Minsk. She now lives in Israel and has been working as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer for the last 15 years. Marina regularly takes part in local art and illustration exhibitions and projects. Marina initiated the USk Israel group - regularly leading sketchcrawls and coordinating the Urban Sketchers Israel blog. She planned and instructed several urban sketching workshops for children and adults, amongst them “Urban Life” together with Ea Ejersbo at the USk symposium in Barcelona.

Sketching is one of Marina’s passions. Everywhere she travels, she takes her sketchbook along with her. But the real essence of urban sketching for her is finding stories in everyday routines, and combining sketching with daily tasks like taking care of her children, working, or running errands. “A sketchbook and a simple pen – that is all you need to go on a journey every day. Drawing is seeing, so you just need to open your eyes wider and start to sketch!”